Top 10 Indian shooters of all time

9.Sanjeev Rajput

Sanjeev Rajput was part of the Men’s 5-0 Rifle Prone team that won the bronze at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and also clinched a bronze in the 50m Air Rifle prone category at the 2006 Doha Asian Games.

Although he failed to reach the finals of the 50m rifle prone event, he continued to put in strong performances on the world stage, by clinching the silver in the 10m Air Rifle Pairs category at the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games and then scaled possibly the biggest high of his career a year later, when he won the Gold at the ISSF World Cup in Changwon in the 50m rifle 3 Position category.

Rajput competed at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, where he won a silver in the 50m 3 Position Rifle event and also won a bronze in the 10m Air Rifle team event at the Asian Games in Incheon last year.

10.Heena Sidhu

While there’s no doubt that the Indian shooting scene has been dominated by male shooters in today’s times, there are also a few female shooters who have been doing very well on the international circuit and one among them is 25-year-old Heena Sidhu.

The Ludhiana-born shooter clinched as many as 4 Gold medals at the 2008 Hungarian Open in the Women’s 10m Air Pistol category and them won 2 more Golds in the same category at the 2008 SAF Shooting Championships in Islamabad.

The Gold rush for her continued the following year as well, as she emerged on top of the podium once again, this time in the 2009 Munich Open where she won Gold in both the individual as well as team categories of the 50m Air pistol event.

The following year, Heena won her first Commonwealth Games Gold in Delhi in the Women’s 10m Air pistol team event and also won her first Asian Games medal, a bronze, the same year in the 10m Air Pistol individual category.

But perhaps Heena’s biggest achievement came in 2013 when she became the first Indian pistol shooter and just the third Indian shooter after Anjali Bhagwat and Gagan Narang to win a Gold in the ISSF World Cup finals. That and several other impressive performances propelled her to the top of the ISSF rankings for pistol shooters in April 2014.

Vijay Kumar clinched a silver for India in the 25m Air pistol event in the 2012 Olympics. One can hope its now Heena’s turn to clinch another medal for India in the pistol category next year.